Portraits of snake charm worth elephant-killing bite

Talk about taking risks in the name of art. In the
course of his work photographing snakes, Mark Laita was recently bitten
by a black mamba - one of the 10 most venomous land snakes in the world.
Bites have been known to kill a human in under 30 minutes, but luckily
for Laita it was a "dry" bite, where venom is not injected. In 2006 a
bite killed an adult elephant. Laita says he didn't realise he'd even taken a photo
of the mamba hanging off his leg until the next day. "It all happened so fast,"
he says.

Laita says he finds snakes so
evocative and sensual that photographing them - in zoos, serpentariums,
anti-venom labs and private collections - is worth the occasional close
call. Like a snake charmer, he has come to understand snake behaviour,
shooting about 50 images of each animal to achieve the best results.

If the photos help publicise the plight of reptiles, so much the better. In a review of snake populations around the world,
Chris Reading at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology in Wallingford,
Oxfordshire, UK, and colleagues found that 11 of 17 populations of
snakes studied plummeted between 1998 and 2002. In five populations the
numbers were stable.

"The jury is still out regarding why
populations of some snake species appear to be declining whilst others
appear to be relatively stable," says Reading. However, habitat loss is
probably to blame for the declining populations, with both climate
change and direct destruction by humans likely causes. "Habitat loss
will almost inevitably also have an effect on the prey species of many
snakes and so this may be one of the main pathways resulting in some of
the observed snake declines," he says.

Well I am in Johannesburg, South Africa. Black mambas are an African snake. A very very dangerous snake. NOT at all inclined to avoid humans. Getting in their face is like playing real Russian roulette. You get away with it once in a while or you end up like Steve Irwin.